Take to the bike for cleaner air

• AS the debate about the Delancey and Pratt Street cycle lanes continued, our city was shrouded in smog as London declared its highest pollution warning level.

Primrose Hill offered probably the “best” vantage point for what turned into a tragically beautiful all-day sunset, with the BT tower becoming little more than a shadow on the smoke-filled horizon.

Meanwhile, practically on the doorstep of the hill, measured on the junction connecting Delancey Street and Gloucester Avenue, we suffer levels of NO2 pollution which are more than double those deemed harmful to health, and averaging well over European legal limits, right outside a school.

Sandy Rattray (Letters, January 26) makes good points about the connectivity these lanes will offer (leveraging the huge work done on the existing network), the safety aspects (so crucial to allowing more people to be comfortable leaving their cars and taking their bikes) and the benefits for the wider community.

However, as a Primrose Hill resident and user of these roads on two wheels as well as four, I would argue that the residents who are being asked to suffer a degree of disruption for the greater good will, in fact, be the ones perceiving the most fundamental benefit of all: in the very air we, and they, have to breathe every day.